Iwas 16 when we sneaked into the bridal shop. I was wearing denim flares twice as big as my legs and a T-shirt with Kurt Cobain's face on it. I kept my hair in a bob so short the lads at school called me 'Harold'. As we approached the glass front door, passing under a sign that said 'Virgin Brides' in red and gold, my friend nodded at it and sniggered, "Ask them if you get a discount".

I'm a total musical tart My playlist goes from Sam Cooke and Emeli Sandé to Maverick Sabre; it's a real pick and mix. But because I work in radio I now dedicate time each month to listen to an album from start to finish; I like the lyrical stories some tell, such as with Emeli Sandé's album [Our Version of Events], which I sing my heart out to on the [London] Underground.

As a pupil whose abilities lay very much beyond the sports pitch, I recall distinctly the contempt and cruelty with which I was treated by those in charge of my supposed physical wellbeing. The problem with sport in schools is that it's precisely that – not exercise, not health, not calisthenics, but sport. And sport is not for all.

She survived sudden stardom to sell more than 40 million albums. Ten years on, she has finally got to know her famous father. So why are pain and heartbreak still providing the inspiration for pop music's mistress of alchemy?

After the glossy, big-budget music video for "Born To Die", Lana Del Rey has returned to the Instagram-esque promos that splice retro footage with sultry shots of the 25-year-old songstress that first caught our attention. The new video for "Carmen", which tells the story of a depressed teenage party girl, has an almost identical aesthetic to previous singles "Video Games" and "Blue Jeans". Want to make your own? Here's a LDR video checklist:

When her mother died from cancer at the age of 53, American poet Meghan O'Rourke found that nothing prepared her for the intensity of her grief. Waking up in a world without her mother she says was "like waking up in a world without sky: unimaginable." O'Rourke's unsparing chronicle of her mother's death explains how it felt to travel from a place of safety to a more desolate shore.

The plot might have been plucked from a crime novel: a wealthy US socialite and her boyfriend were tied up by an armed gang, injected with a "lethal virus," and told that, without help, they would be dead within 24 hours.